Post-Brexit & Post-Covid Recruitment for UK Employers Summit 2021
Time: 09:15 - 13:15 BST (if you can't attend live, register to watch the recording)
Cost per attendee: £195 + VAT
Platform: Zoom - An encrypted zoom platform with password access. Click here for further information and to test access
New ways of working, along with a shrinking supply of labour, have created unprecedented problems for the UK hiring market. 90% of employers are planning to hire at the fastest rate for eight years, but the labour pool is much diminished. The twin blows of Brexit and Covid have seen employers struggle to fill positions once held by EU workers. Hospitality and construction are currently struggling, but all businesses should be thinking about and planning for their upcoming recruitment challenges.
UK employers need to plan carefully and explore innovative new ways of identifying, recruiting and training potential EU and UK workers to ensure survival. This intensive half-day briefing will examine:
- Current and future recruitment trends and how best to prepare
- How to ensure continued access to the best talent
- Innovative methods to attract low-paid workers and effective alternatives
- The way in which the recruitment landscape will evolve and how to ensure you attract and retain the best talent
- The new immigration landscape and how to ensure your recruitment is compliant
- The latest practical solutions to finding, hiring and retaining staff in the new normal
- What thought leaders and strategy experts are predicting and how UK employers should plan for the future
Please note: If you might like to endorse or sponsor the event, please see how to get involved here.
Which functions will benefit from attending
- HR and recruitment professionals, administration, training, security, risk, compliance, legal, policy, vetting and screening, operations and all line managers and directors and staff with responsibility for Right to Work checks and non- UK employee recruitment
Hear from
Schedule
Chair's welcome, introduction and ice-breaker
Tom Hadley
Business Coach & International Workforce Consultant , Hadleys Comment
Tom is an independent consultant and business coach specialising in high-impact strategic communication and workforce issues. Over the last twenty years, Tom has worked with global employers, international institutions, government ministers and two of the UK’s leading business organisations. He reaches into this to provide training and consultancy services in areas such employer brand, leadership, reputation management, research-led campaigning, employee engagement, public speaking and media training. Tom is the author of a number of White Papers and research reports on the evolving world of work and is a regular keynote speaker and media spokesperson. Campaigning activities have focused on Covid-19 business support measures, preparing for Brexit, promoting the positive role of business in society and making change happen on equality and inclusion. During his time as Campaigns Director at the REC, Tom also established the Future of Jobs Observatory to pre-empt future skills needs and the implications of AI adoption. His current work with the International Labour Organization (ILO) involves delivering advocacy training to business bodies from around the world and bespoke support in areas such as evidence-based advocacy and crisis management. Over the course of his career, Tom has been a representative on over a dozen government forums and served on the European board of the World Employment Confederation. He has a Masters in International and European Law from Assas University in Paris and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). He is a qualified rugby coach and an unrepentant aficionado of 1980s French pop.
Opening address: Armageddon or Brave New World?
Kate Shoesmith
Deputy CEO , REC
Kate has been with the REC since March 2013. She is responsible for the REC’s external engagement strategy and providing a leading voice for our industry. Kate is a spokesperson for the REC, regularly appearing in the UK media and speaking on platforms to talk about the jobs market, employment and skills. Kate’s background is in policy and public affairs. Prior to joining REC, she was Head of Policy & Corporate Affairs at City & Guilds. She has been a governor for two London further education colleges and an adviser to a number of external forums, including Business in the Community, UNESCO Education for All, Youth Employment UK and Women in Recruitment.
- The true impact of lockdown: which industries are at risk?
- Adapting and surviving: what UK businesses should be doing now
- Future growth: leveraging the boom in healthcare, pharma and life sciences
- Adaptability, diversifying and digging in: a pathway for UK plc
Roundtable: Scope of the issue: Labour shortage in the UK
Kate Nicholls OBE
Chief Executive , UK Hospitality
Kate Nicholls OBE has been CEO of UKHospitality, the powerful voice representing the broad hospitality sector, since its inception in 2018, having previously worked as CEO and Strategic Affairs Director of the ALMR. Kate is Chair of the Tourism Alliance and co-Chair of the London Tourism Recovery Board, representing the needs of the wider tourism sector in discussions with Government and the Mayor of London. She sits on the Government’s Tourism Industry Council and Events Industry Board, the London Food Board and has previously Chaired the London Night-time Commission. She is a Board member of London & Partners, Best Bar None, PASS and is a trustee at Hospitality Action. In July 2021, she was appointed as the first Government Disability Ambassador for hospitality, promoting inclusivity. Kate initially worked as a researcher in the House of Commons and European Parliament on food, employment and environmental policy before joining Whitbread to work in Strategic Affairs. She has extensive experience as a political and strategic communications consultant and is a graduate of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and Kings College London.
Amelia Bishop
Brexit Change Specialist , Amelia Bishop Consulting
Amelia Bishop leads the company in providing the capability or adding capacity to businesses that are struggling with recruitment and retention, supply chain assessment, customer review, competitor analysis and increased costs caused by the uncertainty or require assistance with understanding and managing the Brexit related changes successfully.
Mark Essex
Director , KPMG
Mark helps places, businesses and government to develop strategies to improve their future skills gap. He analyses domestic policy and global megatrends and translates their impacts on consumer behaviour, the workplace, supply chains, and infrastructure. In his new role as Director of Skills, Mark assesses how those changes will affect the demand and supply of skills. Mark is a disruptive thinker. He edited KPMG’s Reimagine public policy programme, contributing ideas on how to build more homes, make social care better and more productive, eliminate the need for food banks and boost life-long learning. In Reimagine a digital society, Mark’s film presents a future in which AI makes many more of our buying decisions; he explores what this means for consumer-facing businesses including the 'human' skills required to educate the bots in how to meet our needs. Mark loves learning new skills himself, and spends his spare time keeping his thirty year old boat afloat by developing his skills in electronics, plumbing and diesel engine maintenance. Mark is a school governor at the City Academy Hackney and until recently, the chair of Bounceback, a charity dedicated to providing skills and employment opportunities for ex-offenders. Always happy to submit his ideas to challenge and debate, Mark is an experienced writer, thinker, keynote speaker, and live broadcast panellist and presenter.
- UK challenges: geographical and sector-specific hiring challenges
- UK as a job market: the view from overseas
- Migration from hospitality to supermarkets: can it be reversed?
- Essential messages to Government: what needs to change?
- Alternatives to traditional hiring routes
Comfort break
Updates to the immigration landscape
Ian Westwood
Immigration Consultant , The Westwood Organisation
Ian Westwood worked at the Home Office from 1993-2003. He was an operational Immigration Officer serving at Heathrow, Gatwick and Dover before being promoted to Chief Immigration Officer based in Croydon. Since then he has set up his own consultancy business, providing training and immigration advice to a variety of corporate and private clients on the subject of Immigration. He is regulated by the Office of the Immigration Service Commissioner to provide immigration advice in the UK. Ian’s training credentials include the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s Certificate of Training Practice and the Belbin Team-Role Accreditation.
- Recruiting and employing EU workers post-June 2021
- Becoming a sponsor: requirements and implications
- Skills and other visa categories
- PBS
- What are the alternatives and what can we learn from other countries?
Breakout groups
Ben Mannion
Director , Hewett Recruitment Ltd
Ben Mannion has worked in recruitment for over 15 years following a degree in Economics from the University of Cambridge. He is a Director of Hewett Recruitment, a Worcestershire based agency that supplies permanent, temporary and contract solutions. Alongside its specialist Permanent divisions covering the Commercial, IT, Engineering, Finance and Executive sectors, Hewett supply a large number of blue collar workers to local businesses. Their clients range from large household names such as Vax and Specsavers through to a variety of SME manufacturers, and Ben has an in depth knowledge of this market place. Away from his day to day work, Ben is a Board Director and President of Herefordshire & Worcestershire Chamber of Commerce, Chair of the Future Skills Board for the Worcestershire LEP, a member of the Employment & Skills Board for Worcestershire LEP and a Worcestershire Ambassador. Ben is passionate about the skills agenda, in particular regarding careers advice and young people, along with the wider challenges facing the UK labour market. Through his career in recruitment and his roles with the LEP, Chamber and Hewett, Ben has an expert understanding of the labour market challenges that businesses of all sizes face in a Post-Covid and Post-Brexit world.
Simon Conington
CEO , BPS World
Simon has a passion for growing businesses through a belief in people. After many years of doing this for other people, he founded BPS World in 2001, a global recruitment organisation. Throughout his journey, he has consulted with the leadership of many businesses in helping them create a competitive advantage in the ability to attract, recruit and retain the right people. Simon sits on the governance board of the REC (Recruitment and Employment Confederation) as well and Chairing the Engineering the Technical sector group. In this capacity, he has also sat as an expert representative in various Governmental committees and Lords hearing commissions. Additionally Simon is the chair of the board for Innovative Alliance, a leading Adult education provider. His early career began in farming, where he gained an understanding of ethics and the reward gained from growth and nurture. These fundamental principles still guide him today in the development of people to harness their true potential.
Tom Hadley
Business Coach & International Workforce Consultant , Hadleys Comment
Tom is an independent consultant and business coach specialising in high-impact strategic communication and workforce issues. Over the last twenty years, Tom has worked with global employers, international institutions, government ministers and two of the UK’s leading business organisations. He reaches into this to provide training and consultancy services in areas such employer brand, leadership, reputation management, research-led campaigning, employee engagement, public speaking and media training. Tom is the author of a number of White Papers and research reports on the evolving world of work and is a regular keynote speaker and media spokesperson. Campaigning activities have focused on Covid-19 business support measures, preparing for Brexit, promoting the positive role of business in society and making change happen on equality and inclusion. During his time as Campaigns Director at the REC, Tom also established the Future of Jobs Observatory to pre-empt future skills needs and the implications of AI adoption. His current work with the International Labour Organization (ILO) involves delivering advocacy training to business bodies from around the world and bespoke support in areas such as evidence-based advocacy and crisis management. Over the course of his career, Tom has been a representative on over a dozen government forums and served on the European board of the World Employment Confederation. He has a Masters in International and European Law from Assas University in Paris and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). He is a qualified rugby coach and an unrepentant aficionado of 1980s French pop.
Sarah Thewlis
(Chair of REC) & Managing Director , Thewlis Graham Associates Ltd
After graduating with a history degree, Sarah commenced her career in retail HR with Marks and Spencer PLC. During her twelve years there she undertook a mixture of high-level operational and strategic HR policy roles. Following a secondment scrutiny from M&S she moved into general management when she was invited to join the staff at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) as Deputy Chief Executive. This appointment marked the beginning of seventeen years in the health and charity sector, fourteen of which as a CEO. After three years at the RCP she took the role of Chief Executive at the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) for eight years. In 2002 she was appointed Chief Executive and Registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council for six years. Sarah moved formally into Search as the Head of the Not-for-Profit practice: Gundersen Partners (formerly Bucher Rugman) at the beginning of 2009. Following the decision of Gundersen Partners to withdraw from the UK and Europe, she set up Thewlis Graham Associates in 2010 with Robert Graham, one of the original team of Bucher Rugman. Sarah is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners. She is a member of the Worshipful Company of Needlemakers. Sarah has a Masters in Medical Law and Ethics. She holds and has held a number of Non-Executive and Public Appointment positions including: Chair of a cancer support charity and Vice Chair of an Independent School. Also Vice Chair of Phoenix Futures; a national charity providing programmes to reduce the impact of drug and alcohol-related harm.
Delegates will choose to attend one of the following breakout groups to meet fellow professionals facing similar challenges. Guided by industry experts, attendees will discuss potential solutions to specific recruitment challenges and report findings back to the whole seminar.
Breakout group options:
- Low-skilled - Ben Mannion
- STEM - Simon Conington
- Public services - Tom Hadley
- Executive level - Sarah Thewlis
Discussion group feedback
Comfort break
Panel discussion: Regional, national and global solutions
Menno Bart
Europe Public Affairs Committee Chair , World Employment Confederation
As Public Affairs Manager, Menno drives the relationships with (international) policy makers, employers federations and other organisations and networks. Key stakeholders include the EU Institutions, ILO, OECD, WEF, Global Apprenticeship Network and others. He manages membership of and input to employers federations including World Employment Confederation, BusinessEurope and IOE. He has a background in the public sector, as a Dutch civil servant and as a diplomat in Prague and Aruba, but has since worked as a consultant and as a lobbyist for an industry federation in Brussels. Currently he deals with public affairs or government relations for Adecco Group, based in the group HQ near Zürich, Switzerland.
James Chaplin
CEO , Vacancysoft
As the Founder & CEO of Vacancysoft, James is generally considered to be a thought leader in regards to hiring trends and is quoted frequently in the media. Vacancysoft are a data publisher who provide insight through labour market analytics and work with most of the largest recruitment firms including Hays, Page Group, Adecco, Robert Walters and others. James has been at the forefront since forming the business and is invited to speak regularly at industry events to discuss the latest trends emerging, be it due to COVID, BREXIT or anything else. To find out more information about Vacancysoft, please go to http://vacancysoft.com
Duncan Brown
Principal Associate at IES & Visiting Professor , University of Greenwich
Duncan has 30 years’ experience working in major HR consultancies and employment institutes, including Willis Towers Watson and IES. He also spent five years as the deputy CEO at CIPD. His clients have included National Grid, the Cabinet Office, the Department of Health, Unicef UK and the Fairtrade Foundation. He has carried out major reviews for the government of the pay determination methodologies for groups including doctors and dentists and the judiciary. He has been on expert panels on topics including employee engagement, fair pay and pensions; and he inputted extensively on the gender pay reporting proposals. He was also a member of the research team that have carried out the gender pay gap in medicine review. Earlier this year, he was confirmed in the top ten HR Most Influential Thinkers list produce by Human Resources magazine.
Jas Rai
Head of People , The British Library
Jas is Head of People at the British Library and non-executive director at the Commonwork Trust. Jas joined the Library 18 months ago after six years with Sony as Head of Talent & Development based at their headquarters in Japan. Moving from a global tech company to a national public sector organisation with bases in two UK regions, Jas has a wealth of experience in all aspects of HR organisational development from talent management to strategic workforce planning plus learning and development strategy and implementation. Continuing to support the British Library’s people through the practicalities of a global pandemic, Jas has also just launched the British Library’s new three year People Strategy which will drive culture change and policy reform.
Closing address: Practical planning and strategy for UK employers
Tom Hadley
Business Coach & International Workforce Consultant , Hadleys Comment
Tom is an independent consultant and business coach specialising in high-impact strategic communication and workforce issues. Over the last twenty years, Tom has worked with global employers, international institutions, government ministers and two of the UK’s leading business organisations. He reaches into this to provide training and consultancy services in areas such employer brand, leadership, reputation management, research-led campaigning, employee engagement, public speaking and media training. Tom is the author of a number of White Papers and research reports on the evolving world of work and is a regular keynote speaker and media spokesperson. Campaigning activities have focused on Covid-19 business support measures, preparing for Brexit, promoting the positive role of business in society and making change happen on equality and inclusion. During his time as Campaigns Director at the REC, Tom also established the Future of Jobs Observatory to pre-empt future skills needs and the implications of AI adoption. His current work with the International Labour Organization (ILO) involves delivering advocacy training to business bodies from around the world and bespoke support in areas such as evidence-based advocacy and crisis management. Over the course of his career, Tom has been a representative on over a dozen government forums and served on the European board of the World Employment Confederation. He has a Masters in International and European Law from Assas University in Paris and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). He is a qualified rugby coach and an unrepentant aficionado of 1980s French pop.
- Employment changes: wages, training, flexibility, job security
- Apprenticeships and work-based learning
- Innovative working solutions
- Recruitment back to basics: job description & design
- The role of AI in recruitment
- Identifying and managing post-Covid safety concerns
Closing remarks
End of briefing
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“Difficult topic as so many unknowns, but all speakers contributed greatly to my knowledge” – Lloyd’s Register
“Excellent one-day event, lots of valuable information and guidance” - Office of the Independent Adjudicator
“Crammed with useful and relevant information and guidance” – University of Kent
